IRENE NOEL-BAKER   Poet
Translator of Greek literary works
Psychologist
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Poetry

Artemis Poems (IV)
Departure
Dutiful Wife
Eros in Piccadilly
Erotisis (Question)
Facing Hydra
Fair Hermia
Homage to Sylvia Plath
Homewards
Jalousie
Letters Home (I)
Letters Home (II)
Letters Home (III)
Letters Home (IV)
Letters Home (V)
Marriage
Masquerade
Mystery
Old Flame
Old Photos
Parsifal
Parsifal II
Persephone to Demeter
The Church at Malaucene
The Music
Train Journey

 

Greek Translations

Άρτεμις IV
Μασκαράτα
Στο Τραίνο

 

Related pages

Changing the Story
River Work

Jalousie

i)

We are together now:
Draw down the blinds
And pull the shutters in
Close, me to you, until
The strands of morning fall
Across the bed, and your eyes

Strain against it again
Hoping to recover the darkness
Lost
When we were one.

ii)

You look away and leave me
Cut by the ice of your distant glance
At something that may just
Get your attention, further than I am.

While I am left with what you gave me then
That look
Trembling forever outwards
Taken now from between the two of us.

iii)

It isn't that I don't love you my dearest
Only that the world holds more than your fine face
And that in moments of repose, when you may see
The things you've done, and things you need to do,
I will be thinking of the morning sky, aflame,
And of the many ways that light may fall
And burn, and die, and burn again.

And then when you lift up your head
And turn to me
I see how soft and beautiful your eyes
Are, as you turn to me
Remembering again that I am here.

© Irene Noel-Baker (2024)